In a time of unrest and uncertainty, every job seeker yearns for an opportunity to work for an organization that supports a healthy work-life balance, professional development, and healthy & rewarding daily workload – in other words, a Great Place to Work. Almost every company on the market will make the statement that they’re different, unique, and/or a big family and that work is just one big party. The reality is that a lot of jobs come with heavier, monotonous, and restrictive workloads that often leave the employee wondering how or why they joined the company in the first place.
Sadly, this fact traverses all types of organizations – Start-ups, SME’s, and big businesses alike. Employees can be overlooked, undertrained, underdeveloped, micro-managed, and/or forgotten in almost any environment.
So what makes Bitmovin different?
Agility, communication, and ideation
Like most start-ups, our organization is based on an agile and adaptive approach where every team (and individual) is encouraged to regularly evaluate their weekly tasks and experiment with new approaches that might improve workflows or communications. From Epic teams to SCRUM to less traditional Slack stand-ups – we’re constantly working towards improving ourselves. Working in an agile environment allows a lot of freedom, but also comes with great responsibility. (Excessive) communication between managers and employees is encouraged to build trustful relationships and a sense of transparency – especially as it applies to the progression of our business. In addition to transparency, open communication yields countless ideas and experiments for process-oriented or technological developments. Bitmovers know that they can ask for help and the team will do what it can to assist, even if it’s passing the request along to a different team.
Encouraging input from all sides of the organization is just one of the many ways that our “Bitmovers” are finding joy in their work-life. And although we don’t identify with the cliche term that is “we are family”, we identify with something that can (at times) be more powerful – we are a “Team” working towards the common goal of personal and business success.
This feeling of togetherness that comes as a teammate leads to unmatched success – can you imagine a scenario where your favorite sports team won a club or international cup because of the coffee bar or snacks they have in their recreation rooms? Likely not – the driver of success is always working towards a common goal where every team member wants to see themselves and the organization “win”.
Innovation at our core
As American inventor, Thomas Edison famously stated, “failure is a stepping stone to success.” This outlook towards training and experimentation is at the very core of culture and drives our need to innovate. Every Bitmover knows that failure is just a part of learning, and it’s not harmful as long as they don’t give up and continue to learn from their experiences. Problems, errors, and issues are analyzed as they develop to ensure future development and success. Bitmovers will work together to find a solution to any problem. Having this understanding allows us to innovate and constantly seek new ideas.
Managers work side-by-side with employees (during COVID-19 – metaphorically speaking) to explore innovations and new research. We host quarterly internal hackathons to stretch our minds and imagination; bi-weekly tech talks, learning labs & global meetups to engage in thought-provoking technical discussions internally and throughout the video streaming industry. Bitmovin even has it’s own educational research arm that collaborates closely with the Alpen-Adria University in Klagenfurt, Austria to build and understand more complex compression and video quality measurement experiences. To top it off, some Bitmovers are even shaping the future of video as contributing members of the Moving Picture Experts Group (MPEG).
Work Hard, Play Hard
Innovation and communication aren’t the only drivers of our company’s success, as any moderately successful business might tell you. You can’t just treat employees like workhorses – our Bitmovers are encouraged to investing as much (if not more) time into their personal lives as their work lives. Amongst things like hackathons, Bitmovers are invited to seasonal ski days, after-work get-togethers, and perhaps most importantly, a balanced home life. Although COVID-19 forced work-from-home measures to the extreme – every team member is welcome to WFH as needed to take care of their personal needs: have a doctor’s appointment? A child who’s sick at home? A pet who may need an extra walk? or the weather is just exceedingly nice – our Bitmovers are encouraged to take the time they need at home at all times, the most important factor is transparency with your team and completing your daily or weekly deliverables. Drop a message to your team lead and remain in your bed, and start working when you are ready.
Experience has proved that our employees can do some of their best work when given trust and freedom from micromanagement. This was more relevant than ever during the COVID-19 pandemic, as every member from every team worked remotely and was able to achieve all of their primary tasks and goals. Having full trust in our employees has allowed us to grow more than we ever imagined – employees are completing their tasks with higher efficiency and with lower error with the ability to decide and control how they do their best.
Why is Bitmovin a Great Place to Work?
The combination of trust, innovation, communication, and agile work processes has earned Bitmovin an award that vindicated something we’ve known all along – that it’s truly a Great Place to Work and that we can only grow from here.
Interested in working for our great team? Check out our open positions, we’re hiring all over the world! https://bitmovin.com/careers/
Did you like this post? Check out some the great content we’ve referenced:
- [Blog Post] Hackathon Q4 2019 – Summary
- [Blog Post] Hackathon Q1 2020 – Summary
- [Blog Post] MPEG Meeting Takeaways
